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Author Topic: Interesting, but little known, Facts about Famous People  (Read 946 times)

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AGelbert

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Interesting, but little known, Facts about Famous People
« on: June 13, 2018, 07:50:44 pm »
Did you know Groucho Marx's brother was an inventor? 
 
Zeppo Marx might have been the "straight man" among his brothers (Groucho, Chico, Harpo, and Gummo), but he got his chance to laugh all the way to the bank in other ways. The youngest member of the famous Marx Brothers comedy team, Zeppo (whose real name was Herbert Manfred Marx) had a knack for mechanical processes and founded the Marman Products Company in Inglewood, California, in 1941. The company's biggest (and most infamous) claim to fame was producing the clamps used to secure the atomic bomb dropped by the Enola Gay on Hiroshima during World War II. In fact, Marman clamps are still used in a variety of spaceflight systems, including the Cassini orbiter. In addition to his work on the Marman clamp, Zeppo Marx also earned two patents for early heart rate monitors and another patent for a heating pad.

Making their Marx:
 
֍ Groucho Marx hosted The Tonight Show for two weeks after Jack Paar quit. He also introduced Johnny Carson as the show's new host in 1962.

֍ The Marx Brothers originally wanted to be singers, but after a commotion caused by a runaway mule :D interrupted an early show, Groucho got the crowd roaring with laughter, and a comedy team was born.

֍ Chico once impersonated Harpo on the TV game show I've Got a Secret and got away with it.

http://www.wisegeek.com/did-the-marx-brothers-have-any-talents-besides-comedy.htm
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Did you know Groucho Marx's brother was an inventor? 
 
Zeppo Marx might have been the "straight man" among his brothers (Groucho, Chico, Harpo, and Gummo), but he got his chance to laugh all the way to the bank in other ways. The youngest member of the famous Marx Brothers comedy team, Zeppo (whose real name was Herbert Manfred Marx) had a knack for mechanical processes and founded the Marman Products Company in Inglewood, California, in 1941. The company's biggest (and most infamous) claim to fame was producing the clamps used to secure the atomic bomb dropped by the Enola Gay on Hiroshima during World War II. In fact, Marman clamps are still used in a variety of spaceflight systems, including the Cassini orbiter. In addition to his work on the Marman clamp, Zeppo Marx also earned two patents for early heart rate monitors and another patent for a heating pad.

Making their Marx:
 
֍ Groucho Marx hosted The Tonight Show for two weeks after Jack Paar quit. He also introduced Johnny Carson as the show's new host in 1962.

֍ The Marx Brothers originally wanted to be singers, but after a commotion caused by a runaway mule :D interrupted an early show, Groucho got the crowd roaring with laughter, and a comedy team was born.

֍ Chico once impersonated Harpo on the TV game show I've Got a Secret and got away with it.

http://www.wisegeek.com/did-the-marx-brothers-have-any-talents-besides-comedy.htm
No, I had never heard about Zeppo and Marman Clamps. Pretty cool.

I am old enough to remember Groucho from his TV show, and remember those black and white TV movie matinees of the Marx brothers, although I probably never saw half of 'em. They were old then.

Groucho Marx was incredibly naturally funny. Brilliant ad-libbing.....with him it seemed like it was all ad-libbed.

I didn't know any of this. Great find. "You Bet Your Life" was a staple on TV for me as a kid. I. remember the duck dropping down if someone said the secret word.

Eddie's point about Groucho being a great ad-libber is true. He was also reputedly quite the ladies' man. And  I did not know that Groucho Marx hosted The Tonight Show for two weeks after Jack Paar quit, and introduced Johnny Carson as the show's new host. I remember that Paar quitting was news, but I was only 12 and late night TV was not on the menu for school nights.


As an old geezer, I remember Groucho well. ;D All he had to do was lift his eyebrows and I would start laughing!  :D
« Last Edit: April 12, 2022, 11:36:11 am by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Which Author Used the Most Pen Names?

Daniel Defoe is best known as the author of the 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe, but there’s so much more to know about this outspoken writer, who is widely credited with popularizing the English novel in the early 18th century. Defoe (born Daniel Foe circa 1660) grew up in a family of dissenters: Presbyterians opposed to the dominant Anglican Church. At an early age, Defoe voiced his concerns in anti-establishment pamphlets. He was also a businessman, journalist, and secret confidant to King William III, always with an opinion about the day’s important issues. Defoe frequently wrote under a pseudonym, and as many as 198 pen names have been linked to him. Besides Robinson Crusoe, Defoe also wrote Captain Singleton, Memoirs of a Cavalier, Colonel Jack, A Journal of the Plague Year, and Moll Flanders, as well as a variety of satirical poems, religious pamphlets, and more.

Daniel Defoe

A prominent voice in English literature:

Defoe's views were not always well received. In fact, in 1703, he was put in the pillory for seditious libel. Being pilloried involved restraining the accused person's head and hands, and leaving them to the whims of crowds that would gather.

In Defoe's early life, he experienced several epic events in English history, including the Great Plague of London, which killed 70,000 people; the Great Fire of London, when his home and only two others survived in his neighborhood; and the Dutch raid on the Medway.

The full title of Robinson Crusoe is actually The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pyrates.

https://www.wisegeek.com/which-author-used-the-most-pen-names.htm
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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How Did Beethoven Write Music after He Went Deaf?
« Reply #3 on: August 15, 2019, 06:34:14 pm »
How Did Beethoven Write Music after He Went Deaf?

Great artists don't let adversity get in their way. Take Ludwig van Beethoven, the iconic German composer who started going deaf in his mid-20s and had lost virtually all hearing by his mid-40s. While one would think that anyone who wants to write music -- especially at Beethoven's level -- would need to hear what he is playing, that didn't stop Beethoven. According to his housekeepers, the composer would hold a pencil in his mouth while he sat at the piano to compose and touch the end of it to the soundboard, letting him feel the vibrations and keep notating.

The method apparently worked, as Beethoven continued composing at a fervid rate, penning "Moonlight Sonata," Fidelio --his only opera -- and several symphonies without being able to hear. Of course, this later period wasn't all success, as Beethoven also tried banging as loudly as possible on his piano to hear his music, destroying the instrument in the process. Theories regarding what caused Beethoven's deafness abound, ranging from syphilis to Beethoven's habit of submerging his head in cold water in order to stay awake, but no definitive answer has been uncovered.

All about Beethoven:

🕯️ Beethoven was so well known in his time that when he died in 1827, his headstone bore only a single word: "Beethoven."
🕯️ In addition to hearing loss, Beethoven is also thought to have dealt with other health problems, including rheumatic fever, typhus, ophthalmia, jaundice, colitis, rheumatism, hepatitis, and cirrhosis of the liver.
🕯️ Beethoven had loved Friedrich Schiller’s poem “Ode to Joy" as a child, and finally put it to music in the final movement of his Ninth Symphony.

https://www.wisegeek.com/how-did-beethoven-write-music-after-he-went-deaf.htm
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Robert Frost wrote the folllowing poem to his writer friend Edward Thomas as a joke.


The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves, no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Now that you have read the poem, please note the following relevant quote by the poem's author:
Quote
“I’m never more serious than when joking.” -- Robert Frost

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

 

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